506 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
These figures were 8 or 9 inches long, and nearly all of them lacked some portion of 
the body, some an arm, others a leg or the head. The medicine men seated them- 
selves around the picture on the ground in a cirele, and the Indians from the differ- 
ent bands crowded around them, the old men squatting close by and the young men 
standing back of them. After they had invoked the aid of the spirits in a number 
of chants, one of their number, apparently the oldest, a toothless, gray-haired man, 
solemnly arose and, carefully stepping between the figures of the men, dropped on 
F1G. 713.—Moki masks traced on rocks. Arizona. 
each one a pinch of the yellow powder which he took from a small buckskin bag which - 
had been handed to him. He put the powder on the heads of some, on the chests of 
others, and on other parts of the body, one of the other men sometimes telling him 
where to put it. After going all around, skipping three figures, however, he put up 
the bag, and then went around again and took from each figure a large pinch of 
powder, taking up the yellow powder also, and in this way collected a heaping 
handful. After doing this he stepped back and another medicine man collected a 
